14 comments:

Crowd sourcing is like herding cats. It's the idea that somewhere in the crowd that enough people will see the patterns you want them to see, the idea you want them to have, or that something rises from the muck of thought to have some meaning or relevance. There is no consideration for who is in that crowd or what you think you know about them or what you want them to think they should know about what you want them too. It's a brute force approach when you just need the right people positioned in the right places. The glaring truth is that law enforcement dropped the ball and went to a trendy fashion of using a mass of people to help them with their problem to ferret through information rather than using what they were trained to do themselves.

They in effect, tacitly admitted that they weren't up to the task of doing their job and we aren't any better for it. If you were creeped out by the shutdown of Boston, then you know what marshal law looks like now. When you make places like facebook or reddit your resource for information, what does that say about you?

As I heard the story, the Reddit crowd ultimately identified the right guy. Is that not true?

The fact that there were blind alleys and false leads along the way is an uavoidable part of the process, not evidence the process doesn't work. Or am I mistaken that police leads don't always pan out either?

The problem is that people too loosely define crowdsourcing. When it's done right, there's a semblance of common mission, goals, and order, possibly even a small amount of leadership. It's mostly self guided, but it's not random, chaotic, or spontaneous. The Amish building a barn is a sort of loose example of "crowdsourcing"; so's everyone pitching in meals and support to a family member or neighbor who's experienced tragedy.

What Reddit did wasn't crowdsourcing. It was crowd panicing. It was putting a mob mentality into play. It was basically just a few steps short of lynch mobbing.

When the individuals in a crowd are able to think rationally, clearly, and work with others calmly, then crowdsourcing can succeed. But without that, you see nothing more than mob behavior.

People need to stop thinking of crowdsourcing as being nothing more than a crowd acting for one common cause. Riots do the same thing, yet no one calls that crowdsourcing.

I was actively reading that particular Reddit thread. I did not comment, and I am not a registered user of Reddit.

Here's the kicker: At one time, that thread had 9000 readers.

How many people were watching CNN?

The idea that Reddit propagated a "witch hunt" overlooks the fact that nearly every other post was a caution against such a thing. A large majority of the communications were civil in nature, and were sincere in their intentions to identify any interactions or people THAT LOOKED SUSPICIOUS OR INTERESTING BASED UPON INFORMATION AUTHORITIES HAD RELEASED TO THE PUBLIC.

And as for the missing Brown student, how many MORE people know now about his situation, and can be on the lookout for him?

That does not absolve some Reddit participants of making assumptions and jumping the gun.

It was speculation, which is what 'real' news organizations do all the time, but draw much less ire overall.

I'm not even a Reddit fan. Heck, I haven't been back since the bombings. There were rich discussions about breaking news and the overall timeline, and there was also the assumption that nearly everything should be taken with a grain of salt.

People are taking this particular case which has some firsts to it and assuming that whatever happened here is some kind of reliable pattern. Basically extrapolating a single data point. That's dumb.

The Reddit thing could have found the guys immediately, and the lockdown could have lasted days and been unsustainable. This one incident tells us very little about what is good procedure and what isn't, except that giving your little brother the keys is a bad idea.

I'll tell you what Reddit did wrong. They allowed for open speculation based on incomplete information in a nearly instantaneous manner as the event unfolded. This challenges the existing model of speculation based on incomplete information by the established news channels, blogs and less interactive websites. It impairs the ability of the professionals to shape the narrative and inform opinions. It's the future, and it's scary to some people.